1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device management apparatus, a device management system, and a device management method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, services that monitor information on devices, such as image forming apparatuses, on a network and issue reports of monitoring results have been provided by various service providers or the like.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2005-108217 discloses a technology, in which, to access a monitored device among devices communicably connected to a network, at least one communication protocol supported by the device is used to access an external information storage unit to thereby acquire information for access to the device, the information for access to the device acquired from the external storage unit is stored in an internal storage table, a communication protocol is selected from a plurality of communication protocols, and the access to the device is enabled by using the selected communication protocol and the information stored in the internal storage table.
Furthermore, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2008-77649 discloses a method for acquiring information concerning a monitored device on a HTTP-based network in order to acquire a uniform vendor name and/or product model name when different vendor names and/or product model names are present.
However, in the conventional technologies, while information is acquired from various devices in an office, the information is only accumulated and reported. Therefore, there is a demand to acquire information from different types of devices and provide various services based on a combination of the acquired information and the like.
Therefore, there is a need to provide a device management apparatus, a device management system, and a device management method capable of acquiring the status of use from a plurality of devices and providing various services.